Speed Kills: Who Killed the Cigarette Boat King, the Fastest Man on the Seas?

SPEED KILLS

In broad daylight

On a dead-end Miami street of dreams called

Thunderboat Row,

A hundred witnesses nearby,

Who got away with killing The Don of powerboat racing,

Don Aronow?

A True Story

By ARTHUR JAY HARRIS

Smashwords Edition

SPEED KILLS is a journalistic account of the actual investigation of the murder of Don Aronow in Miami, Florida in 1987. The events recounted in this book are true. Names that have been changed are noted in the text as such. Research has been done using author interviews, law enforcement and other public records, published and broadcast news stories, and books. Quoted sworn testimony has been taken verbatim from transcripts.

Copyright 1998, 2013, 2017 by Arthur Jay Harris

Published by arrangement with the author.

Originally published by Avon Books

Research for this story was originally published in Boating magazine

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information, please email the author at http://www.arthurjayharris.com

Cover photos courtesy John Crouse

Cover and typographical design: Bruce Kluger, New York City.

http://www.brucekluger.com

First electronic book edition: March 2013

Other true crime books by

ARTHUR JAY HARRIS

JEFFREY DAHMER’S DIRTY SECRET:

THE UNSOLVED MURDER OF ADAM WALSH

(A TWO BOOK SERIES)

BOOK ONE: FINDING THE KILLER

Was the man in the mall the most notorious murderer in history?

BOOK TWO: FINDING THE VICTIM

The body identified as Adam Walsh is not him.

Is Adam still alive?

FOR BRIEFER READING, THE TWO BOOKS

HAVE BEEN CONDENSED INTO A

SPECIAL SINGLE EDITION

First the police found the body. Then the killer. Neither was right.

ALSO BY ARTHUR JAY HARRIS:

FLOWERS FOR MRS. LUSKIN

Who ordered the deadly delivery for the millionaire’s wife?

UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT

Could the real-life Kojak help save a man from the electric chair?

The heroic spirit has fallen from grace. Time and technology have shrunk the number of acceptable outlets for the daring, aggressive nature that swung the sword and mapped the unknown, until it has come to be associated primarily with criminals.

—WINIFRED GALLAGHER

HOW WE BECOME WHAT WE ARE

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, SEPTEMBER 1994

The psychopath and the hero are twigs of the same branch.

—DAVID LYKKEN

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR AND RESEARCHER

QUOTED IN THE SAME STORY

How do I want to be remembered? You mean after I’m gone? Who gives a fuck?

—DON ARONOW

AUGUST 1985, TO THE ROBB REPORT

(WHICH EDITED HIS LANGUAGE FOR PUBLICATION)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WHO KILLED THE DON OF POWERBOAT RACING?

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In 1984, Vice President George Bush, who owned a Cigarette, came to Miami to personally test-drive Aronow's prototype for the Blue Thunder drug interdiction boats for U.S. Customs. From left: Willie Meyers, Bush (in ski goggles), two Secret Service men, and Aronow. Photo courtesy John Crouse

An Aronow family Christmas card photo, with Don, Lillian, and son Gavin. Photo courtesy Newcomb and Fran Green

Don and Lillian in the Winner's Circle. At left, his trainer Newcomb Green. In 1985, Don’s stable was the top winner at Gulfstream Park. Photo courtesy Newcomb and Fran Green

In 1983, Aronow entered a horse, My Mac, in the Kentucky Derby. Wearing his Cigarette Racing Team jacket, he converses with Howard Cosell. Photo courtesy Newcomb and Fran Green

Ben Kramer and his racing pals, from left: Willie Falcón, Keith Eickert, Sal Magluta, Bobby Saccenti, and Kramer. Later, the feds indicted Falcón and Magluta, alleging they smuggled into the U.S. 75 tons of cocaine worth $2.1 billion. Separately, Kramer was indicted for smuggling marijuana into the U.S. and laundering $300 million in proceeds. Photo courtesy John Crouse

Helicopter shot of Miami's N.E. 188th Street, bordered on both sides by canals and dead-ending into Biscayne Bay (to the east, beyond the top of the photo). On left, the boat storage facility of Fort Apache Marina; behind that is Apache Performance Boats. Not in the shot, USA Racing Team is across the street from and east of the Apache facilities. Photo courtesy Metro-Dade Police Department

Don Aronow's Mercedes-Benz at the spot of the shooting, in front of Apache Performance Boats. Crime scene photo courtesy Metro-Dade Police

Close up of where a bullet exited the passenger door of the Mercedes. Photo courtesy Metro-Dade Police

The Lincoln Town Car used during the shooting. At the time it was a rental car. Photo courtesy Metro-Dade Police

1990 police lineup includes Robert Young, wearing #2. Photo courtesy Metro-Dade Police

Robert Young, who pled no contest to shooting Aronow from the black Lincoln. Photo courtesy Metro-Dade Police

WHO KILLED THE DON OF POWERBOAT RACING?

On an industrial street just behind Loehmann’s that dead ends into Biscayne Bay, a place most Miamians don’t know exists and would need a map to find, Brooklyn-born Donald Joel Aronow made his name, most of his fortune, and satisfied his whims in a way few men ever do. An immigrant’s son, he built boats that went fast—very fast—and sold them to kings, princesses, presidents-for-life propped up by the U.S., CEOs, the CIA, fugitive financiers, oil-wealthy Arabs, the Mossad, big-league dopers, the people who tried to catch big-league dopers, current and to-be U.S. presidents, and every other type of rogue who could borrow a briefcase and stuff it with enough high denomination dinars.

But that was not how he made money, he would tell you. Like the guy who was so impressed by a Remington razor that he bought the company, Aronow tried to impress you with his boats so you would buy his company.

Then you’d sue him after you had.

His door was open to anyone, but he’d cut you off after a few minutes. His boats were gorgeous but his office was ramshackle and disorganized. He didn’t dress well. He owned a Rolls but hated it, and for years drove to work in a fire-engine red Rabbit convertible, too cramped for his six-foot plus frame. But he had his priorities. He built a false wall in an office closet that led to a spiral staircase and an upstairs room where he entertained young ladies in a suite with a large bed, and a shower with more nozzles than most people would find necessary. His friends would one-up each other with stories about him. One said he saw Aronow ascend the stairs with three women, one after another, each one gorgeous. When he came down, he’d light a cigar and say with a big grin, Nothin’ like it.

That’s nothing, said another Aronow observer on N.E. 188th Street, Thunderboat Row. I saw him one day with four. The oldest one was twenty-four. Not bad for a man pushing sixty, ethnic-swarthy with thick eyebrows, and half-blind. No wonder he always complained to his wife that he was too tired to do much in the evenings.

Aronow was the living, breathing personification of what his muscle boats could do for your flagging sex life. For a long time, his primary market was rich men in middle-age crises. His most famous boat company was called Cigarette—which became the generic name for all fast boats—and one blunt full-page ad for the company in a Spanish-language boat magazine said what was too vulgar to properly express in the English-language: "Mas que un objecto sexual... Una tigresa entre gatitos—more than a sexual object, a tiger among kittens."

The chicks flocked. Satisfied Aronow customer Bill Wishnick volunteered a testimonial for a Sports Illustrated profile in 1969. I was a married, out-of-shape, middle-aged businessman, he said. Now I’m divorced, an ocean racer and a swinger. Seeing Don was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Aronow’s most famous picture defined him—smirky grimace, ebullience in the deep lines of his forehead, both cotton sleeves badly ripped at the shoulders, his hand bracing an injured elbow that should have slowed him down at least the six feet he won the five-hundred-mile marathon by, but didn’t.

Even beyond the last day of his life, Aronow’s fans held the moment of that picture as who he would forever be.

No other sport, not even auto racing, causes as many fatalities as powerboat racing. Even beside that, ocean-going powerboaters give their bodies an incredible pounding each time their crafts bisect a choppy wave at high speed. In his career, Aronow broke his nose, an arm, a foot, and his sternum as he tried to control his boat while racing full throttle in the most dangerous seas. Sometimes his boat would lurch a hundred feet out of the water, then crash into the next wave. And for most of his racing years, he refused to wear a helmet.

Aronow was in his thirties and forties when he did all this to himself. What was he trying to prove by this adult ritual of passage? What childhood deficit was he trying to even the score with? Aronow’s friendly competitors those years called him that crazy Aronow, who won races not necessarily with the fastest boat, but because he was fearless in the worst of conditions. As he passed boats that prudently slowed down, he smiled. Other racers thought he had a death wish.

When Don was forty and his daughter Claudia sixteen, she wondered out loud, I wonder what Daddy will be when he grows up.

By 1987, almost two decades had passed since his last race, and he was planning to make a comeback. Usually, older men don’t put themselves in danger the way they might have as younger men. But Don Aronow had shown few signs of growing up even after age forty, so that rule might not have applied.

Aronow once described himself as something of a juvenile delinquent until he was seventeen.

He was a juvenile delinquent when he was forty, said his longtime friend Dick Genth, himself a racer and boat builder. He was a juvenile delinquent when he was shot. Genth remembered barroom brawls, free-for-alls, and a food fight with tortillas that Aronow instigated in a restaurant in Mexico. Don was a big laugh, he said.

Eras can end in a single moment. The flapper Twenties ended the instant the stock market bubble burst in 1929. A similar graphic truth that powerboating’s—and Miami’s—Go-Fast Eighties had met its sudden, sobering end February 3, 1987 was the sight of Don Aronow’s blood pooling onto the bucket seat of his gleaming white two-seater Mercedes, idling at high rev a few hundred yards west of his last big-name boat company.

Don Aronow had sold pleasure boats to celebrate life. Murder was not supposed to be part of it.

In a time when Miami was Murder City U.S.A., Aronow’s was the city’s scariest and most glaring. Up to then, Miami had oddly celebrated its dubious image. Those of us here knew that most of those statistics were rooted in drug deals gone sour, and if bad guys wanted to kill each other, c’est la vie in the big city. Meanwhile, Miami Vice reminded us that drug money had added wealth, elegance, and excitement to the city. And it was true.

But Aronow didn’t have a reputation of involvement with criminals, although his murder certainly exuded those trappings.

The world was about to change anyway. The age of AIDS was arriving. The stock market free-fell 508 points on a single day later that year. Nancy Reagan had repeated Just Say No enough to make the message sink in. The public paired Cigarettes and smuggling. So did the Marine Patrol; Cigarettes headed for open water were routinely stopped, on no other suspicion than they were Cigarettes. NBC canceled Miami Vice.

Later the same week Aronow was killed, Carlos Lehder, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel, was apprehended in Colombia and extradited to Florida to face federal charges.

The Go-Fast business quickly went limp. Nobody wanted them; they were too expensive, they ate too much fuel, they were beautiful relics of a lost time of excess and machismo.

Had Don Aronow died racing even one day before his murder, he would have gone out a hero. But on the closer scrutiny he got after he was gone, it turned out that what made Aronow great and glamorous were probably the same qualities that led to his premature death.

That is to say, if it was a premature death. Aronow might also have been on an inevitable collision course whose day of impact could not be put off much longer. Did the pleasure machine mutiny and kill its creator?

When Elvis Presley died, songwriter Neil Young suggested in the medium that Presley had entered as a raw talent, then helped to corrupt, It’s better to burn out than to fade away:

The King is gone, but he’s not forgotten.

This is a story about Johnny Rotten...

There’s more to the picture than meets the eye.

ONE

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 3, 1987

Miami, Florida

February 3, 1987 began like most other perfect, warm, and sunny southern Florida winter days.

Don Aronow was less than a month shy of his sixtieth birthday. Nothing seemed to be wrong that morning, his wife, Lillian, said. He got up at seven, called his office, USA Racing Team, at about nine, and talked to his salesman, Jerry Engelman. He said he reminded Aronow that he had an eleven o’clock meeting at Financial Federal Savings and Loan, of which he was a member of the Board of Directors.

The bank was run by his friend and fellow boat builder Elton Cary. Cary’s wife, Frances, shared half the stock with him, but after they divorced, Cary had enlisted Aronow to help him gain voting control of the board. Frances had since taken Cary, Aronow, and others to court, and at that moment the tide was turning in her favor.

After 9:30 Aronow left his house to check on the new Spanish-Mediterranean bay-front mansion on Miami Beach that he and Lillian had bought for $2.1 million and were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars—much of it in cash—to remodel. Built in 1929, the mansion had 9,900 square feet, eleven bedrooms, nine baths, and a private dock with the most stunning view in town—downtown Miami’s new postmodern skyscrapers, almost all banks, buffered by miles of shimmering blue water. On both sides of the mansion were estates owned by English disco stars the Bee Gees. Don and Lillian planned to move in once the work was done.

But Mike Kandrovicz, Aronow’s longtime jack-of-all-trades, said Aronow got a threatening phone call that morning at the new house. He was standing with Aronow when he got it. Aronow got nervous—extremely unusual for him, Kandrovicz said—and wouldn’t discuss it.

At 10:30 Aronow called Engelman again and said he was on his way to the bank. Normally those meetings ended at 1:30.

At almost two o’clock, on his way to his USA Racing Team office, he called his elder son Michael, and got Michael’s wife, Ellen. He was in a good mood, she said. He said he was supposed to have a meeting at the Apache Marina.

At the shop, Patty Lezaca, Aronow’s office administrator, said she saw a car with dark- tinted windows drive into the parking lot. Kandrovicz said he saw it too, and noted it was black. Minutes later, Aronow arrived, bearing the mail. It was sometime after two o’clock. He went straight to his desk, stopping to berate Engelman about a boat engine order.

Within a few minutes came a foreshadow of what was to happen.

Someone entered the front door and walked in front of Engelman’s desk. He was in his thirties, about Aronow’s height—which was six feet, three inches—with collar-length, sandy blond hair, a blond moustache and sideburns, wearing a straw-colored hat, a red pullover shirt and Bermuda shorts. Nobody in the office had ever seen him before.

Could Lezaca help him? He asked to speak with Don Aronow, then looked right at him without recognizing him.

What do you want? Aronow said.

He wasn’t a boat buyer, Engelman could tell; he looked more like a truck driver. Kandrovicz thought he looked like a bodyguard.

I’ve been trying to get ahold of you, the man said. I’ve left messages. He said he worked for a very rich man, with an Italian surname, who wanted to make an appointment to buy a boat.

I never heard of him, Aronow answered.

Engelman could tell something else was happening, and he thought Aronow was trying to find out what the hell the guy was doing there. Then the conversation got weird.

He was proud of his boss, he said. He picked me up off the street when I was sixteen and took care of me. I’d even kill for my boss. Then he said his name was Jerry Jacoby.

Everyone in the office knew Jerry Jacoby, but this was not the same man. The Jacoby they knew—who was short—had won powerboat racing’s world championship in 1981 and the U.S. championship in 1982. Also in 1982, he had organized a group that purchased Cigarette Racing Team from Aronow, although the deal had since resulted in litigation.

Aronow said he didn’t make appointments, but told the man just to bring his boss to the business and he could be there within ten minutes. Then Aronow asked him for identification.

Jacoby reached into his back pocket, stopped, then said he didn’t have it with him. He had it in his car, he said, and went outside to find it, then never came back. For the moment, Engelman, Kandrovicz and Lezaca didn’t think anything more of the incident.

Aronow then returned some messages, and called his old friend and protégé Bobby Saccenti at Apache Boats to ask when he would pay the $16,000 balance of the $24,000 he owed Aronow for engines he had bought ten months earlier. Aronow told Saccenti he would stop by—diagonally across the street—to see him.

Minutes later, Aronow walked out of the office, then Ben Kramer called for him. Lezaca said he had left for the day.

In the previous year Ben Kramer—another Aronow protégé—and his dad Jack had built Fort Apache Marina, a high-rise boat storage facility with a casual waterfront restaurant and wooden patio bar called Apache Landing that was popular on weekends. It had brought some classy looks to a street that sold itself as a boulevard of wet dreams but was really just a bunch of gritty plants loud with buzz saws, its air heavy with the smell of lacquer and dusty with airborne fiberglass.

Ten minutes later, Aronow walked back in. He had been talking in the parking lot to Mike Peters, who had just started as a salesman for him the day before. Aronow then wrote down some numbers.

Ben Kramer just called you, Lezaca told him. I thought you had left.

No, I’m leaving now, Aronow responded, not anxious to speak to him, it seemed to her. I’ll see you tomorrow. He added that after seeing Saccenti, he would be going home.

Another ten minutes later, Kramer called again. Lezaca explained what had just happened.

Meanwhile, Aronow drove across the street to Saccenti’s shop and walked in back. There, he found Saccenti and Mike Britton—a marine supplier—and George Bacher, a sixty-seven-year-old man who had commissioned Saccenti to build him a boat. Aronow asked Britton if he could help him find a molding for a staircase at his new house and some trim work for one of his boats.

Britton and Aronow then walked to the street, where Aronow had parked his new 1987 white Mercedes 560 sports coupe next to Britton’s blue-and-white 1986 Ford pickup. Britton drove out of his parking space forward, and Aronow backed up behind him.

That’s when Britton saw a dark Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows, about ten yards away, in front of the construction site on the other side of the road from Apache Boats. It was parked half on the dirt and sand shoulder of the narrow street, facing east as Britton was about to head west. The driver’s window was down, and Britton could see the driver looking at him.

Britton said the man was tall, in his thirties, had wavy dark brown hair combed straight back, and was clean-shaven with a day or two’s growth of facial hair. He was white but had a tanned complexion, and wore a white shirt.

At their closest, when they passed, they were just a few feet apart, keeping eye contact the entire time. Then Britton drove on to Fort Apache—a total trip of hardly fifty yards from Saccenti’s.

Then he heard gunshots.

Britton finished parking his truck, then raced back toward Aronow. In a hurry, the Lincoln passed him, going west. It had turned around.

It was just before 3:30—when some of the boat shops sent their production workers home for the day. People swarmed into the street, as they would have had nothing happened.

By the time Britton got to the car, others had arrived. By happenstance, Bobby Saccenti’s personal physician, Dr. Wesley King, was also present. He would have the other onlookers take Aronow out of the car and place him flat on the street; then he would begin CPR.

The car was sitting parallel in front of the painted sign on Saccenti’s building that read APACHE. Britton found Aronow’s driver’s side window nine-tenths down, the automatic transmission in neutral, and Aronow’s foot pressed against the accelerator like a rock, forcing the engine to rev at its most shrill. Apparently, Aronow had stopped for a moment to kibitz with his killer.

3:31 P.M.

Metro-Dade Police Dispatch

Since the shooting had happened in an unincorporated part of Dade County (although its postal address was North Miami Beach), Metro-Dade Police received the 911 call that went out. Dispatch radioed a bulletin of a shooting at 3161 N.E. 188th Street and a BOLO—be on the look out—for a dark Lincoln Continental that was being pursued by an observer of the shooting, who was driving a black 1986 Toyota pickup truck with the word Cigarette on the side.

Since Metro-Dade Police District 6 and a fire station next door were just two miles south, fire rescue and a fire engine arrived in two or three minutes. They found Aronow lying beside his car and began applying life support, including an oxygen mask. Meanwhile, Aronow’s blood pooled underneath him, staining the road.

3:35 P.M.

OFFICER OSCAR PLASENCIA

The first police officer arrived. He was Oscar Plasencia, who was cruising on road patrol at about 163rd and Biscayne Boulevard when he heard the dispatch. Immediately, he called for backup.

Onlookers had already begun to gather. Plasencia’s first actions were to clear room for the emergency workers, then secure the crime scene area by roping it off with yellow tape.

A minute later, Corporal Tim Williams arrived. As the two men pushed onlookers back, they began to ask around, Did you see anything?

George Bacher, who moments before had been talking to Aronow, approached Plasencia. He was holding a coffee-stained styrofoam cup with six brass-colored spent bullet shells. He said he had heard the shooting and came over to the car. Looking down a few feet south of where Aronow was lying, he said he and Eddie Beato, a twenty-one-year-old Cigarette employee, noticed the shells. Bacher said he collected five of them into the cup using the legs of his eyeglasses so he wouldn’t have to touch them with his hands—he said he had learned that from watching Kojak. But Beato had picked one up with his hands because he wanted to see what kind they were. The brand was Felco.

Plasencia took the cup and put it in his patrol car. He knew the two men were just trying to help; however, it would have been a bigger favor if they had left the evidence where it was and called an officer over to observe it.

The next witness Plasencia found was Mike Britton. He said he had seen the Lincoln’s driver lower his window and fire five rounds into Aronow’s Mercedes.

Another witness, twenty-five-year-old Michael Harrison, told Plasencia that he was in his vehicle traveling westbound in front of Aronow’s car when he saw a black Lincoln Continental driving eastbound. He got a glimpse of the driver: he was dark complected, with dark, bushy hair, and possibly a light beard—or just a couple days of growth.

3:40 P.M.

DETECTIVES GREG SMITH AND JIM RATCLIFF

The first two homicide detectives on the scene were Greg Smith and Sergeant Jim Ratcliff. When they heard the dispatch call they happened to be on Miami Gardens Drive—N.E. 186th Street—and N.E. 6th Avenue, on another case. In the few minutes it took them to arrive, a number of other uniformed officers and Northeast district detectives had also gotten there, and the crowd of onlookers had grown to about fifty.

Some of those officers already had blocked off the west end of 188th Street. Since the east end dead-ended into the Intracoastal Waterway, that meant that everyone on the street had to stay put—even though the work day was over.

Ratcliff found Oscar Plasencia, who described what he had learned in the previous ten minutes. Then Ratcliff radioed for a crime lab unit to respond.

Smith surveyed the crime scene. On the ground near the left front fender of the Mercedes he found four white shirt buttons and a lead pencil with a small amount of blood. He also wrote down descriptions and license plate numbers of five vehicles parked nearby, all of which turned out to be owned by factory workers.

Then he and Ratcliff began working the crowd to find additional witnesses.

First, Ratcliff found Cigarette Racing Team employee Lynda Kirkland, aged twenty-three, who had called 911, but she hadn’t heard the shooting herself.

Next, Ratcliff talked to George Bacher. He said he had talked with Aronow, Britton, and Bobby Saccenti minutes before the shooting. When Aronow and Britton left in their vehicles, Bacher walked into Saccenti’s warehouse, and that’s when he heard either three or four gunshots.

Bacher said he quickly ran out to the street and saw Aronow slumped over his steering wheel. The Mercedes’s passenger-side door was open, and he noticed a bullet hole in it.

4:15 P.M.

Mt. Sinai Medical Center

Miami Beach

Metro-Dade helicopter Air Rescue One arrived with Aronow at Mt. Sinai Medical Center. Lillian Aronow, his wife, had already been called by Patty Lezaca, and told to go to the hospital. It was a short ride for Lillian, and she was there when the helicopter touched down.

Chief of emergency medicine Dr. Stuart Lerman immediately began heart massage and other attempts to revive Aronow. He had four gunshot wounds: to the front of the left shoulder, the rear of the left shoulder, his left side underneath the armpit, and his left wrist. Also, he had a graze wound to the right side of the chest, and cuts to the left cheek of his face. There was also extensive internal trauma to his lung and heart, and he had lost a lot of blood. His pulse was being supported artificially.

4:28 P.M.

Dr. Lerman pronounced the victim deceased.

4-5:30 P.M.

Crime Scene

SERGEANT JIM RATCLIFF

Ratcliff interviewed Jesus Haim, aged thirty-four, employed at Apache Boats, who said he heard six gunshots, then ran into the street in time to see a fleeing Lincoln Continental, a newer model, very dark blue or black. But he couldn’t tell anything about who or even how many people were in it.

He said when he got to the Mercedes, the driver’s window was open but the passenger door was closed.

Haim said he saw the shell casings on the ground, and—contradicting George Bacher—Haim said he picked up four of them. He was even able to describe where he had found each: one was directly south of the Mercedes, on the south swale of the street; two were seven feet behind (to the east of) the Mercedes; and one was on north swale of the street.

Mario Alvarez, aged thirty, another Apache Boats employee who was inside working, said he heard either three or four shots. He said he and three or four other employees raced outside, and he saw a black four-door Lincoln Continental, new, leaving the area.

Marcus Brown, aged thirty-seven, also well working inside Apache Boats, said he heard six gunshots. He was standing next to a large exhaust fan with a louvered window that allowed him to see outside. He said he heard the shots, then immediately looked out the window and saw a black, late-model Mercedes sedan with dark-tinted windows approach Aronow’s white Mercedes, then drive around it and leave westbound.

Inside the dark car he saw two silhouettes, but couldn’t describe them at all. He insisted that the dark car was either a 300 or 500 series Mercedes, because he owned a similar one.

David Peña, aged twenty-three, a Cigarette Racing Team employee, said he was crossing 188th Street about a hundred yards east of the occurrence when he heard five shots. He immediately looked west and saw Aronow’s car, which he recognized.

He then saw a very dark blue or black Continental make a wide U-turn around Aronow’s car, then go westbound. He noticed the hubcaps: they had squared-off rims, as opposed to spokes. He also thought he had seen a sticker on the left side rear bumper of the Lincoln, although he couldn’t describe it.

4:30 P.M.

DETECTIVE GREG SMITH

Smith interviewed Mike Britton, aged thirty-three. He said he had known Aronow for about eight years, and had come to 188th Street to speak to Bobby Saccenti. He then briefly described what he had seen happen.

4:35 P.M.

DETECTIVE MIKE DeCORA

Mike DeCora had been at the medical examiner’s office in downtown Miami when his sergeant, Mike Diaz, found him and assigned him to be lead detective on the case. Within a half hour he arrived at 188th Street to find chaos, with the challenge of creating order out of it. Either on scene already, or en route, were ten homicide detectives to conduct interviews or canvass the area, two homicide sergeants, two crime scene technicians, and a Dade County assistant state’s attorney, Gary Rosenberg.

5 P.M.

BOLO RESPONSE

While Smith was interviewing Britton, a call came in from North Miami Police. Responding to a revised BOLO for a black Lincoln four-door driven by a white male, at about 4:45 they had spotted a black Lincoln Town Car with a license tag that had a Z in it (which indicated a rented or leased car) driving south on Biscayne Boulevard at about N.E. 110th Street, about five miles from the crime scene. They followed it west for about five minutes until it looked like it might enter an I-95 ramp, then they requested backup officers and stopped it. The driver was a white male.

He said he hadn’t been anywhere near N.E. 188th Street. He had left the Cricket Club on Biscayne and N.E. 114th Street and was on his way to pick up a friend at federal court in downtown Miami, then take him to Miami International Airport.

Archie Moore and Steve Parr were members of the same homicide team as Mike DeCora, all stationed at police headquarters west of downtown. On their way to the crime scene, DeCora ordered them to stop first at where the Lincoln had been detained. Then DeCora ordered Detective Paul Ohanesian, who was at the scene, to take Britton there.

5 P.M.

DETECTIVE MIKE DeCORA

On the street, DeCora found Patty Lezaca, aged forty-three, Aronow’s secretary, who was in a panicky state. She described the Jerry Jacoby incident.

Then DeCora spoke to Ray Garcia, aged thirty-six, who said he had known Aronow for fifteen years, from horse racing. He had last seen Aronow the previous weekend at Hialeah Race Track, where Aronow had two horse trainers—Newcomb Green and J.R. Garrard. Garcia said Aronow had seemed to be in good spirits.

5:05 P.M.

DETECTIVE GREG SMITH

Smith found Miguel Fernandez, aged fifty-five, a fiberglass worker for Apache Boats, who didn’t speak English well. He said he was working inside when he heard what sounded like four gunshots. Immediately, he raced out with three other workers—Jesus Haim, Mario Alvarez, and Marcus Brown—and they all ran to the white Mercedes. Fernandez said he didn’t see a car leaving the scene.

5:20 P.M.

Michael Harrison, a stock room manager for Cigarette Racing Team, told Smith he was crossing 188th Street with David Peña—before the shooting—when he looked down the street and noticed both the Lincoln and Aronow’s Mercedes in stationary positions. He also looked at his watch; it was 3:25, almost quitting time.

[However, that contradicted what Officer Oscar Plasencia had written down when he had interviewed Harrison. He said Harrison told him he was in his vehicle traveling westbound in front of Aronow’s car when he saw a black Lincoln Continental driving eastbound, and that he got a glimpse of the driver.]

While crossing the street, Harrison told Smith, he heard about five gunshots, then saw the Lincoln—now he thought it was a black or dark blue Town Car—continue east, turn around the back of the Mercedes using the swale, then go west, although not at a particularly high speed.

Harrison described the Lincoln as a four-door with dark-tinted windows. He said he got a glimpse of the license plate: it was a Florida tag with the letter Z. He saw a bumper sticker, too, but he could only describe it as green, and on the left rear fender.

5:30 P.M.

500 N.W. 95th Street

When Mike Britton arrived at North Miami Police’s traffic stop, he said it wasn’t the same car; this car had chrome on the bottom of the doors, and wire wheels. Also, the white male didn’t match the shooter: his complexion was too light; at five feet, six inches tall and 225 pounds, he was too short and too heavy, and he looked Latin, which was also wrong. Britton said the shooter was tall and slender, had a very high forehead, and his hair was combed back. Further, the man had a moustache and full beard—the most the shooter had was a day or so of growth.

5:30 P.M.

Mt. Sinai Medical Center

By the time Detective Danny Borrego arrived at Mt. Sinai, Lillian Aronow had already left. Borrego spoke with emergency room head nurse Leslie Thompson, who said she gave Mrs. Aronow her husband’s wallet, containing $2,000 and credit cards. Then Borrego called DeCora to tell him Aronow was dead.

Borrego then went to see the body, lying on a gurney in the trauma room. Aronow’s shirt was off, but he was wearing light gray slacks with a tan belt, light brown deck shoes, and gray Calvin Klein briefs. Borrego reached into Aronow’s left rear pants pocket and found a key ring and comb. He wasn’t wearing any jewelry.

Borrego took the keys and comb for evidence. He also impounded six tubes of blood the hospital had taken on admission.

5:30 P.M.

Crime Scene

Crime lab technicians Carl Barnett and Kim Haney arrived at the scene.

First, they noted Aronow’s personal effects, left in the car: on the passenger seat was a well-worn tan leather portfolio, with a well-thumbed notebook inside; an expandable manila folder, with doodlings scrawled on it; two copies of the Daily Racing Form, one dated February 3, another